Bethlehem Woman Denies She Ran Hanover Health Spa

A Bethlehem woman denied from a witness stand yesterday that she ran a Hanover Township health spa where police claimed "whole body massages" amounted to prostitution.

Dareen Helen Robbins, 26, said she was listed as "co-owner" of the Body Clinic on Roselawn Drive when it opened in January 1984. But, she said, by the time state police raided it on Aug. 9, she simply worked as a masseuse and no longer held a partnership in the business.

But Jessie DeRenzis, a Body Clinic employee who was arrested on a prostitution charge during the raid, said she understood Robbins and Henry Bloom owned the spa jointly and she received a paycheck each Friday signed by one or the other.

Trooper James Anderson said when he and other police entered the building, Robbins demanded to know "what I was doing with her two girls. From her reference to them as 'her two girls', I assumed she must be a supervisor."

He conceded that nothing in a cash box seized by police bore her name and he said he "had no idea" if she accepted money paid by two undercover officers who visited the Body Clinic that day.

Robbins went on trial yesterday on charges of prostitution and related offenses. A jury of seven women and five men will begin its deliberations this morning after instructions from Northampton County Judge Richard D. Grifo.

The commonwealth claims that a massage of a man's genital area which was included in the spa's "whole body massage" was a sex act for pay.

County Detective Edward Fluck said he visited the Body Clinic the morning of Aug. 9 and paid $35 for a 40-minute massage. He gave the masseuse, whom he identified as Brenda Reiman, an additional $20 to perform it topless.

Fluck said after massaging his shoulders, back, buttocks and legs, the young woman told him to "turn over" and began a massage downward from his chest. She "put warm oil" on his genitals and "massaged in an up and down motion", Fluck said. He said he announced that he had an appointment in Quakertown and had to leave. He added that he thought he "had enough evidence."

Both Fluck and another officer who took the witness stand testified that they signed forms agreeing to "full body massages" but did not read them.

DeRenzis said she asked Robbins for a job at the Body Clinic last year. "I knew Dorie and I knew she had the business, so I went down and asked her if she needed any help," DeRenzis said.

"We discussed the procedures of the massage," she went on, "that it was a totally European massage, okay? You do the whole body. Basically, what it is, okay: You use hot oil and massage the back, the legs, the buttocks, the feet. Then the person rolls over and you massage the chest, the stomach, the genital area."

"How do you massage the genital area?" assistant district attorney Michael Vedomsky asked.

"You just stroke it," DeRenzis said.

"For how long?" Vedomsky asked.

"Not long," she answered. "You're not supposed to spend much time in that area."

She said under cross-examination by defense lawyer Lawrence Fox that some clients preferred to remain in their underwear instead of disrobing completely.

"The ones who kept their underwear on basically wanted just a regular massage," she said. "A Swedish massage - legs, arms, feet, shoulders."

"Not the genital area, right?" Fox asked. "Right," she replied.

She said her paycheck listed the names of both Bloom and Robbins as "partners."

Anderson said when he entered the Body Clinic, "I was confronted by Miss Robbins. She was emotional. She wanted to know what I was doing there. She wanted to know how I could do this to her since she had given me information on another place.

"I said I had warned her of this. I said, 'I thought you told me you didn't do full body massage.' She said, 'At the time we weren't, but since the guy up the street' - the man she had told me about - 'was doing it, I thought we could do it, too.' "

Robbins said she and Bloom, whom she described as her "boy friend", opened the Body Clinic together but "but then we had some problems and I left. I left the area.

"I came back and I guess we sort of made up. But I was no longer an owner. I was just an employee."

She said they had no formal partnership agreement and "my name was on nothing but the checking account. When we split up, my name was taken off as a partner" and appeared on bank records only as a person authorized to sign checks.

On the day of the raid, she said, Bloom had telephoned her from out-of- town to ask her to deposit money taken in by the operation while he was on vacation.

"No one had made a deposit for several days," she explained. "I was to take the money down and deposit it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been there . . . I honestly didn't think it was for real, until all of a sudden I saw all these police coming in."